Our Team
a cross disciplinary approach
Andres Torres-Vives
Andres Torres-Vives is an award-winning filmmaker and visual artist whose films and work have played at numerous festivals and exhibitions. Along with being a Fulbright and Jacob K. Javits Fellow, Torres-Vives’ work has garnered significant awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council, along with multiple foundations and organizations. He has aired work for the BBC, PRI, and KCET Los Angeles and his last short film ISTINMA, opened the Native Cinema Showcase by the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. Along with his film work, Torres-Vives has worked extensively with marginalized and Native communities, including a full-gallery show at SPARC Gallery in Los Angeles of photography and video by incarcerated minors and a filmmaking residence at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota with the First Peoples Fund. Torres-Vives received his MFA in Directing and Producing from the UCLA School of Film and Television and is Head of the Film Directing Track at The Sidney Poitier New American Film School and Academic Director of Film Spark L.A. at Arizona State University (ASU).
Jesenia Pizarro, Ph.D.
Jesenia Pizarro, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University. Her research focus on urban and intimate partner violence. She is currently a member of the Firearm Safety Among Children and Teens Consortium (FACTS), and the Homicide Research Working Group (HRWG). Throughout her career, she has worked with various police departments and agencies throughout the country in joint efforts to curb violence and has managed funded grants that focus on urban violence and intimate partner homicide prevention, awarded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, National Institute of Health, the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research, and the Center for Disease Control in various capacities and roles. She is also the editor-in-chief of Homicide Studies: An Interdisciplinary and International Journal.
Robert LiKamWa, Ph.D.
Robert LiKamWa, Ph.D. is an assistant professor in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering and the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering at Arizona State University. LiKamWa directs Meteor Studio, a research lab that pursues software and hardware systems for augmented reality, virtual reality, and computer vision. These include focus in operating systems and sensor interfaces for visual sensing, systems for augmented senses in AR/VR (including feel, sound, smell), and mixed reality content development frameworks for immersive data-driven experiences.
Karissa Pelletier, Ph.D.
Karissa Pelletier works in the ASU School of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Her research focuses on the situational covariates of homicide, violence prevention, and firearm law research. She is currently a project manager for the Intimate Partner Homicide Study at ASU, and a trainee for the Firearm Safety Among Children and Teens (FACTS) Consortium at the University of Michigan.
Aashiq Shaikh, Ph.D. candidate
Aashiq Shaikh is an AR/VR Researcher | TEDxASU R&D Director / AME PhD Student at ASU. His interests include pushing the limits of AR/VR experience design, immersive multimedia storytelling, and optimizing low level graphics operations. He currently works at Meteor Studio at ASU and manages undergraduate students in developing the Monumentum Project technology.
Federico Llach, Ph.D.
Musically raised in Buenos Aires as a jazz performer and classical composer, Federico Llach creates music that combines the intimacy of concert music with the energy of popular music. Llach has received several awards and scholarships for Composition and Research from: SADAIC for Orchestral Composition, Fondo Nacional de las Artes, University of California Institute for Research in the Arts, Borchard Foundation, Corwin Awards, UCSB Humanities and Social Sciences, UCSB Office of Summer Sessions and Paul Sacher Stiftung. Llach has founded and directs Now Hear Ensemble, resident at UCSB, a group of classically trained musicians collaborating with composers working with electronics and intermedia. Llach has completed a Phd in Composition at University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) and is currently in the faculty of University of California Merced’s Global Arts Program. Llach is creating the soundscape for the Monumentum Project app.